


Pasos de Cero

by harvest_song



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley's Fall (Good Omens), Gen, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harvest_song/pseuds/harvest_song
Summary: He didn't actually mean to fall...A short introspective look at Crowley's unwritten backstory.
Kudos: 6





	Pasos de Cero

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there. I'm back on my bullshit, it's been a while. Life has been… insane for lack of a better word for it. 
> 
> As usual - I have no beta and also plonked this out in an hour from my phone. All typos and grammatical errors are totally mine.

Once upon a time, there was an angel.

This angel, like all angels, was meant to serve at the foot of G-d. Attentive, bright, and curious, but also creative and contemplative, he was assigned to the task of creating the stars that would one day serve as both navigational aid and as fodder for the aspiration of mankind to leave Earth behind.

However, this angel asked too many questions and found too few satisfactory answers. Seeking answers, he joined the ranks of others who questioned, subverting the will and authority of G-d, seeking their own place in the world. Their disenchantment quickly morphed into calls for revolution, the creation of a new order. His quick mind and faster tongue created a fervor of questions, generating anger that went up like wildfire.

Man, after all, was the center of their rallying cry - a replacement for those she had once deemed favorite. After all, why is it that the Humans will get to enjoy the fruits of their labor, while they remain at her beck and call? Why should they not experience the splendor of what creation had wrought?

One by one they take up arms, except this one. Never one for a fight, this one stayed away from the unending melee of clashing swords, pollaxes, and battle cries. Instead he takes refuge in the place he knows he will never see again, once this is over. Their insurrection will most certainly cost him something dearly - this he knows and understands well. Their G-d is a just one, a merciful being of omnipotence. But he is not fool enough to believe that there will be no punishment for his acts. He is not fool enough to believe that those who will pass judgment will not consider his acts to be any less treasonous as the rest.

He takes one last look at the stars he had once created, smiling wistfully.

He has the answer to his biggest question, though he does not yet know it.

“Why do we test ourselves to destruction?” he asks, plaintive and beseeching, a final time, to a G-d who will not answer.

He waits there until others come to collect him. He is led away in chains, head bowed, and silent, to await his punishment.

_This is how an Angel falls._

***

Once upon a time, there was a Demon.

One day, held by the collar of his blackened, torn robes, he is told " _ **go make some trouble**_ ". He dares not disobey. His new master is a foul tempered one. Angry and irascible are words that do little justice to describe the manner in which this new master (borne from the soul of a prideful Angel who wished to usurp _her_ power) exercises their power over those over whom they hold in thrall. Physical chains here in this realm are meaningless - they are all bound to servitude one way or another until the end, until _Olam ha'ba [1]._

After all, they did not enter the world with free will, it makes sense that they are to remain in service to the power that rules their existence, however that might play out.

Their rebellion has come and gone at the steep cost of what they used to be; stripped of holy grace and their ranks and titles, they have formed their own pecking order. The strongest are not necessarily the thrones and virtues and seraphim that have fallen amongst them. The pecking order is established not dissimilarly from the structures they are used to. Instead of choirs, however, order is determined by their capacity for ruthlessness and brutality. Big demons chew on the little demons until the little guy finally has enough, decides to cut his own teeth, and learns how to chew meat too. With each victory, you get a little bigger, a little meaner, and a little more spooky, until those big demons who formerly held more power than you once upon a time no longer seem so scary. All things in time, obviously.

The demon sent to Earth to make trouble differs from these demons - his fall has not taken his capacity for imagination, nor his ability to see beyond the punishment laid upon them all. This makes him unique amongst them, capable of more than he knows is currently possible. It also makes him a target for them, and he knows when to cut and run.

So up he goes, heedless of the story he is about to set into motion. You all know that story and how it ends - the apple (though really, it was a pomegranate), the serpent, the loss of her favor, and expulsion of her newly created, scared, powerless children into the desert and their future, ready or not.

He receives a second curse from her for that. It's a bad job well done, but it rings hollow, leaving the taste of bile in his throat and a sour feeling in his gut. It is a phyrric victory, though he doesn't yet know it.

He returns to his masters, the taste of ash and pomegranate sticking to his teeth as his only trophies.

That angel he had encountered on the wall had spared him a smiting (for what reasons, he is not yet sure), stammering his way through the conversation anxiously, as if he feared the consequences for the humans more than the potential holy retribution borne of having given them a means with which they could defend themselves.

The angel could have (most definitely _should have_ ) smote him. Baffled by the actions of the hapless principality, he dwells on them, pondering the reason the angel had allowed him to return to his masters, by all reasonable expectations, unscathed. 

What he knows of heaven shifts on its axis further. 

_This is how a former Angel begins to doubt_.

***

He is sent back - since he is so skilled at tempting her new children to disobey, it should be easy work to begin cultivating new legions with which they can overtake the kingdom of heaven, when the time and opportunity arise. Or so his minders rationalize.

In the deserts west of what was once Eden, a fallen, carnelian-haired angel appears from the sands, robed in a blackened mockery of their former vestments. They pull a loose scrap of cloth over their head to veil it from the relentless sun that beats down over what will someday be Mesopotamia, and Persia, and eventually, Iran, and begin to set off by foot to the west. It is the direction he remembers the humans had gone, and so he follows them.

Watch as that ginger haired not-quite-man slips into the small community that has sprung up into existence since he was last here, learns to blend in seamlessly with the people who have begun to populate the small village. His silver tongue is no less persuasive than it had been to the ears of those who served at the feet of G_d. It serves him well, smoothing over distrust, edging it into tolerance, and eventually acceptance

It is not long before he has a trusted position in the community, whispering into the ears of the elders, the decision makers. Now you see him, this smooth operator, this snake in the grass.

He watches these children of G-d, these men that had earned and lost her favor so quickly. They are interesting to him- endlessly creative, fascinatingly resilient, surprisingly fragile.

He smiles easily and plants suggestions, watches as discord he is told to sew spreads among them, but ultimately leaving the choice of what to do with his temptations with them. He had given them the bite from that fruit after all, that knowledge of good and evil- it is solely up to them what they choose to do with it.

He finds he enjoys the chaos he foments, but not to the point of armed conflict. For all that he is a hellthing, reborn in fire and brimstone, twisted beyond recognition and certainly capable of being a thing of nightmares, he does not take pleasure in the harm he can cause. This is another difference from the colleagues he has been forced to align with. He has no use for wanton violence and no taste for bloodlust. It serves his purposes to play long games, watching as the humans do the work for him- he gives them the ideas, but they breathe them into a creature of their own devising.

It isn't long before he realizes that these children of men are plenty capable of sin for sin's sake on their own, without application of any influence from him at all, which is just fine. If the sons of men want to condemn themselves to an eternity in the pits, well, it will be by their own hand.

Far be it from him to muck around in their affairs more than he is required to. After all, she gave them the ability to choose, to determine their next steps. Why shouldn't he allow them to exercise it? He will do no more than necessary to facilitate the process, enough to make his superiors happy (or at least, placate them for a time) but he will not directly interfere.

_This is how a Demon develops free will._

***

_[1] - Olam ha'ba (Hebrew) - lit. "world to come"._


End file.
